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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157457">echo and stone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksherambles/pseuds/kaidariel'>kaidariel (ksherambles)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Songmaster - Orson Scott Card, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Songmaster Fusion, And the Songhouse is...a lot like the shady parts of the Jedi Order, Ansset and Mikal vs Anakin and Palpatine GO, Artistic License - Medicine, Atton is a Follower but that is not a bad thing, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Everything is the Same But Magic Music Instead of the Force, Gen, I PROMISE this isn't a violent story it's just...KOTOR is a Lot when you think about it, Implied Body Horror, Implied Past Mind Rape, Infertility/Impotence, Mical is a good character actually, Other, Past Medical Abuse, Recovery, That's Not How The Force Works, This is Not How Puberty Blockers Work, War Crimes, background Female Jedi Exile x Atton Rand, magic instead of the force, this brought to you by Atton's description of the force</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:34:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157457</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksherambles/pseuds/kaidariel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>KOTOR 2 and Songmaster fusion, where the Jedi Order is an ancient order that collects and trains children with musical powers...</p><p>It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin.<br/>She can hear the Peragus mining facility singing.<br/>The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is more than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.</p><p>It has been five years since she has heard anything sing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>echo and stone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I have no excuses for this nonsense</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin.</p><p>She can hear the Peragus mining facility <em>singing</em>.</p><p>The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is <em>more </em>than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.</p><p>It has been five years since she has heard anything <em>sing</em>.</p><hr/><p>(The Exile hears no songs.</p><p>She is not deaf, in the peculiar way the Songhouse reckons deafness —not as the quality of being unable to hear with your ears, but being unable to hear your own nature, sung.</p><p>But it is not just <em>herself</em> she cannot hear.</p><p>The Exile hears no songs.</p><p>It is as if the universe and everything in it is dead. When Master Vrook speaks, she cannot hear what he really means, below the dry bluster. Kavar’s tone is neutral in a way that is entirely different from his Control. Atris’ voice has a song like bright wind over snow, but only in the Exile’s memory. When she speaks, it’s only a voice.</p><p>The Songmasters sing Malachor. They sing warmongering, betrayal, the Dark Side, and over all, <em>loss. </em>The Exile only hears it in a recording, years later: the loss of music meant the loss of songtalk.</p><p>At the last, the Exile ignites her lightsaber, and drives it into the stone. The sound is empty, empty, empty.)</p><hr/><p>Kreia’s Control is incredible, and so it is always gratifying when she reveals something of herself. When she speaks, she never uses songtalk.</p><p>Come to think of it, Atris doesn’t either.</p><hr/><p>It’s the holos of Malak as a Sith Lord that bother the Exile the most.</p><p>It isn’t that he was the first padawan to show her around the Jedi Songhouse enclave on Dantooine when she arrived. He took himself too seriously, even as a child, but he was kind. He asked her the questions the adults hadn’t thought to, and answered, unprompted, the questions she was afraid to ask.</p><p>It’s his jaw. Malak was a songbird, though the songmasters never placed him out. (It was always Malak who was the songbird, not Revan, who grew into her voice only as an adult.)</p><p>But the horrifying idea of Revan taking a songbird’s natural voice away isn’t it either. It’s that the Exile doesn’t believe for a <em>second </em>that it was to teach him a lesson. It’s easier to believe that Revan loved him, and that changes things, morphs the horror into pity for them both.</p><p><em>It it so wrong</em>, she catches herself thinking, <em>the impulse to </em><em>silence</em> <em>a song </em><em>that is </em><em>in agony</em><em>? </em><em>To hear the pain which you have caused, and </em><em>make it </em>stop?</p><hr/><p>“Soo...” says Atton, nudging a broken piece of droid with a toe. “Songhouse, huh?”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Must be hard. No family, no, ah—”</p><p>The Exile snorts. “<em>Typical</em>.”</p><p>“No? ‘Cause I heard—”</p><p>“The Songhouse <em>is</em> a family, Atton. When I was brought in I was adopted. Legally.”</p><p>“...o<em>kay</em>, so how does an ancient, galaxy-spanning organization legally adopt a kriff-ton of kids?”</p><p>“<em>Illegally</em>.”</p><p>Atton smiles at that, and it’s almost honest. No teeth.</p><p>The Exile relents. “It depends. The other thing, I mean. Species, biological sex, whether they thought you’d be a songbird when you were adopted.”</p><p>He makes a vaguely interested noise.</p><p>She continues breaking down the blaster rifle in her hands. “Once the puberty blockers wear off, those who might have borne children generally find they can’t —hence the Songhouse’s aggressive adoption practices.”</p><p>“Oh. That’s not too bad, then.”</p><p>She looks at him coolly until he flushes, two spots of color on a face that might have once been tan.</p><p><em>Sallowed by dissipated living. </em><em>A follower. </em><em>Without someone to lead him all he is is appetite</em> —that is Kreia, in her mind’s ear. Had it not been part of her gift of the voice, the Exile might not have separated Kreia’s words from her own thoughts. True, Atton looks like he hasn’t seen sunlight or a nutritionally balanced meal in years, but there is...</p><p><em>You have no natural talent for healingsong</em>, says Kreia sternly, but does not correct the Exile’s assumption.</p><p>Atton is still babbling. “Not that, uh, I’m in a position to <em>say</em>.”</p><p>Her laugh is a small huff of air. “It’s what I grew up with. They say Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet.” She tries to sing Modesty, and doesn’t even get as far as <em>don’t</em> <em>stare</em> before her voice cracks and the song turns to ashes in her mouth. Stupid. Like poking at a missing tooth. She’d never had a problem not trying to sing when she was traveling alone.</p><p>“I know that one,” says Atton. “I meant...the rumors get really uh, colorful. I was being stupid. Earlier, I mean. I was –I meant to be filthy but didn’t mean it to be <em>nasty</em> if it’s something you can’t—”</p><p>She puts down the rifle. “I won’t die if I have sex, Rand.”</p><p>Atton looks anywhere but directly at her. “Right. Stupid.”</p><hr/><p>After years of silence, the music is distracting. Eddies and curls, the ticks in the hyperdrive, T3′s gears, Atton’s constant mindless not-quite-spoken chatter. Bao-Dur doesn’t realize he hums as he works, but she can pinpoint his location, his mood, and a sense of what he’s working on anywhere in the ship.</p><p>“I will teach you Control,” says Kreia, and the Exile bristles. She is not a Bell or a Breeze, learning how to breathe, learning Control for the first time. But she keeps Control, and obediently sits down to meditate.</p><p>She tries to imagine a lake in the mountains, surrounded by the walls of her Control, and fed by the meltwater of her life, just as she was taught. It is the reservoir of her songs, released only when she chooses, not in tears, or sudden flights of passion.</p><p>She hasn’t done this in years. Who knows what that lake might contain.</p><p>The image won’t come.</p><p>“Let go of what ought to be,” says Kreia. “I am only interested in what you are.”</p><p>The deep lake has become...something else. A marsh, a bog. The sweet, thick smell of decaying plants feeding the living ones. There is a sense of <em>wet</em>, but there’s no sign of where the water comes from, and no sign of what makes it stay. It’s like nothing she has ever encountered. “Is that...good?”</p><p>“It is you,” says Kreia.</p><hr/><p>Years of doing everything <em>but </em>sing with her voice have left their mark. Lightsong and darksong both sound mangled, strained. Once, the Exile could fill a room with sound, to the edges and no farther, with no distortions. Now, she is lucky to hum a healing without her voice cracking.</p><p>She doesn’t exactly regret not keeping her voice conditioned —she <em>could </em>have sung in exile, technically. Did, once or twice—sung a familiar tune for a drink or a job, sung a lullaby to calm a crying child.</p><p>She could not bear it for long: a tone-deaf stranger pulled from the street would still sing from the overflow of of the life they bore inside them. She does not.</p><p>There was nothing there. She sounded like a corpse trying to carry a tune, no matter how correct her notes.</p><p>She tells herself the song would have only sounded like Malachor, anyway.</p><hr/><p>Atton has Control.</p><p>There are hints of it on Telos, but —</p><p>No. Atton sings.</p><p>The realization hits the Exile like a ton of bricks. Atton sings. It is not the same as <em>having</em> a song, for all living things (and many things that aren’t alive at all) have a song. Atton <em>sings</em>: with his body, with his thoughts, keeping his mind and his hands and his mouth vacuously busy in ways that any songmaster would call “wasting your songs.” But he’s doing it on purpose. He lets those who listen, listen, but they listen to a tune of <em>his </em>choosing.</p><p>It’s a gift of the voice. They aren’t rare, but there’s no <em>usual</em> form they take, and so they can be mistaken for other talents. Revan had a gift with languages. Poor Bastila had been saddled with battle song in a time of war. The Exile herself had a gift: the ability to catch the thread of any song and the power behind it, to harmonize with anyone, of any skill.</p><hr/><p>Revan was quick to sing of herself. You never knew all of what was going on in Revan’s head, but you always knew who and what you were following.</p><hr/><p>(“If a place there is not for the songs to come out,” Master Vandar says in her mind’s eye, one of her earliest lessons as a padawan, “Drown you will in all the things you cannot express. Inflict them you will on others, without knowing them yourself. A grave affliction it is. Even Sith songmasters sing. Sing we must, even if the tone needs correcting. Our debt to the galaxy it is.”</p><p>“What happens to padawans like that?” Revan asked.</p><p>“A question, that is not,” said Vandar, “for so <em>many</em> young ears.”)</p><hr/><p>(<em>Don’t tell Alek</em>, Revan had sung, a rare concession to ignorance over knowledge. They’d given Revan a name, at the Songhouse. They called her after her favorite historical figure. They’d called her Fiimma, the one who <em>had</em> to know Ansset’s song, who’d changed the course of the Songhouse by disobedience, courage, love. (which one depended on who you asked) <em>Don’t tell Alek</em>.)</p><hr/><p>On Goto’s ship, Atton finally sings of himself in his own voice.</p><p>The Exile hears war, hears following Revan, even as she changed, because she was worth following. She hears death, hears killing, and hears the part of him that loves death, that loves killing.</p><p>Atton sings, and the Exile hears Control, <em>perfect </em>Control, the kind that takes all emotions in and gives back nothing genuine, nothing uncalculated, nothing of <em>his</em>. High walls, a deep lake, cold and remote. A place of the drowning of the soul.</p><p>And then the singer, <em>his</em> singer, the one who let herself be caught, the one who broke open his Control by force. She sang the love song as she died –as Atton killed her, singing it back without voice, singing it back with a knife.</p><p>The Exile sings back her shock, wordless: Only one Songmaster of the High Room on Coruscant in recorded history had ever dared such a thing as his singer dared, and <em>never</em> by force.</p><p>“I won’t say that it is not—” Atton’s songs are raw and awkward things, coming from a spring he did not carve, flowing through him like water, like smoke. He would not sing at all except he <em>must</em>. It feels like weakness, a bleeding wound, like something of his was taken away, even if he doesn’t want it back. “You’re not wrong, but—” He sings, wordless, and she understands.</p><p>Atton knows, then, what Vandar had eventually told her, told Revan: a singer with Control who does not sing is a shame. A singer with Control who <em>cannot</em> sing is already dead. Marked for death. His singer had broken her Jedi oaths to save a single life.</p><p>It is no wonder that Atton has had such an uneasy relationship with songs and singers.</p><p>He wants the Exile to teach him anyway. He could be a shield for her, a knife in her hand. He wants to be.</p><p>She knows where to start. <em>I will never hurt you, I will always help you.</em> Atton sings it with a ferocity that takes her aback. <em>Love does not end</em>.</p><hr/><p>The Exile’s breath control gets stronger, her tone more clear. She hears Nar Shaddaa, hears the <em>Ebon Hawk</em>. More, she can hear and sing her companions. It feels like breathing after holding one's breath, like waking up after a long sleep. <em>I’m glad to have you with me</em>, she sings, and Bao-Dur’s and Atton’s backs straighten, despite only having a rudimentary grasp of songtalk. <em>Maybe we can be friends. </em>(<em>Maybe</em>, hums Mira, but it is open to the possibility, less hostile than it was.) <em>I care about you, not the ways you are useful to me</em>, the Exile sings, and Visas frowns, as if she doesn’t understand, as if songtalk were not the first language of all Miraluka.</p><p><em>I am listening</em>, the Exile sings to Kreia, <em>Your songs are full of distortions, but I hear you.</em></p><p>“Do you?” Kreia murmurs, gratified.</p><hr/><p>“What if there are monsters in the lake?”</p><p>In her memories, the Exile can never remember which of the Breezes she was meditating with had asked the question. No name or face gives her comfort. Bastila, about to be graduated early into Stalls and Chambers because of her gift, and already using ego to mask her fear? Juhani, who had come to the Songhouse late, and whose mood swings made her songs tempestuous? Belaya? Yuthura?</p><p>She was not wise like Vandar, or kind like Kavar, or firm like Songmaster Vrook. She had only been in the latter part of Stalls and Chambers, then, taking advantage the privilege of older padawans to teach the younger. It prepared them for adulthood, when they had to decide what to do with grown-up voices. She still wished they would have asked Master Zhar.</p><p>But they had asked <em>her</em>, and they deserved her answer.</p><p>“The monsters are songs, too,” she said, after a moment.</p><p>She meant to say <em>don’t be afraid</em>. She can only guess what the young ones heard.</p><hr/><p>Visas’ Sith songmaster master would sometimes take her voice, preventing her from singing the grief of her dead world. He is a hungry silence, more anechoic chamber than man. He drains the music from whatever he touches, chasing the echo of death, feeding on songs cut short, ended, lost.</p><p>Visas rarely sings her own songs, now. She sets them aside in favor of others’ —the Exile’s, or the echo of Nihilus’ power. It is not quite as viscerally terrifying as Atton’s song of Control: Visas instinctively knew that Control and Song are hand-in-hand. She does not keep Control when she cannot sing.</p><p>It is why, perhaps, she hides herself away and veils her face: emotions are strange and wild things, when you are used to singing them.</p><p>The Exile teaches her all the exercises and songs she remembers from childhood, and thinks of the Songmasters, trying to lose themselves on Nar Shadda, on Dantooine, on Onderon.</p><p>She does not think of years spent being a ringing silence herself. She had no choice. She has one now.</p><hr/><p>Mira hears songs of individuals over distance, hears the distortion of people who aren’t <em>home</em>.</p><p>The Exile hones her pitch, teaches her how to grasp the song heard faintly and amplify it, singing it back so that it can be heard and healed. She teaches Mira posture, courage, how to stand and sing in any situation, even when you cannot <em>stand</em>: feet rooted, alert spine, breathe out, not up. No fear.</p><p>When Mira reappears after the Sith tomb on Dxun, joking with Bralor in his own tongue, there is a sense of something finally settled, a rhythm finally found.</p><hr/><p>“What did you learn in your exile? Visas asks.</p><p>The Exile rolls Visas’ lightsaber crystal in her hand, thinks of the smells of decay and of growing things, of water soaking up from the ground. She presses the crystal into the Miraluka’s palm.</p><p>“It is something like you learned, I think. I am alive. Song or no song or song-deaf. I am still here.”</p><p>“You think that is a good thing?”</p><p>“<em>Why</em>?” says the Exile, lightly. “Have you changed your mind about me? Are you going to lead me in chains before your songmaster?”</p><p><em>Never</em>. The note is short and sharp, but there’s something the Exile can build on, there. <em>My life for yours</em>.</p><p><em>If you are frightened, I’ll be your friend</em>, the Exile sings. The love song.</p><p>Visas scoffs, not recognizing it. “I do not fear death.”</p><p><em>Neither do you wish to live</em>, the Exile does not say. “But you fear mine?”</p><p>“I regret it. I would delay it, if I could.”</p><p>The Exile smiles. “Then you’ll just have to keep keeping me out of trouble.”</p><hr/><p>The Exile had hoped to never set foot on Dxun again. It’s just as loud as she remembers, even with her dulled senses. It is not just the jungle —the moon rings with the memory of death and mines and fire and water, even though the fighting has long ago stopped. It’s either the echo of what came before, or the silence, after.</p><p>“It’s hard to hear myself think sometimes,” says Bao-Dur, “But being around you helps.” And: “I’m glad you let that old warrior go. I’m not sure I would have wanted to do the same.”</p><p>“It’s not always about what I <em>want</em>,” she says, gently. “There has been enough death and hatred, I think. So I chose.” She runs a towel over her hair, uselessly trying to get rid of some of Dxun’s damp, and adds “You wondered how I made it through without my songs. You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice.”</p><hr/><p>“Her influence threatens the integrity of the other students’ music!” says the recording of Songmaster Vrook. “She is like Ansset, and could doom us all.”</p><p>“That is a <em>myth,</em>” the Exile growls.</p><p>“Ahh,” says Bao-Dur mildly. “I’m pretty sure Ansset was a real person. Last of the Three Imperators and one of the founders of the Republic? Ring a bell?”</p><p>The Exile crosses her arms. “He was a Songbird first and last. One of our greatest. The stories <em>say</em>,” she says, drawing the last word out, “that he could change people’s songs, even without singing. Make them feel whatever he wanted. Make them become what he wanted.”</p><p>“Creepy,” says Atton, at the same time Bao-Dur says “You’re nothing like that.”</p><p>“No?” says the Exile, and Atton is not sure if she is angry, or if that is some kind of loss or hunger in her face, her eyes.</p><p>Atton scratches the back of his head. “Well, sure. You can harmonize with nearly anyone. Even Kreia. You said that was your gift, not changing the songs of others.”</p><p>“This Vrook person called you <em>dangerous </em>in the same breath as <em>average </em>and <em>disliked</em>,” says Bao-Dur. “Are you sure he has even met you?”</p><p>She exhales, a small laugh. “He never liked me.”</p><p>“Then he is letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment, and you have your answer.”</p><hr/><p>Mandalore is deaf to songtalk, but his awareness is exceptional. “Your teacher is a fine hand at blocks, Exile.”</p><p>The Exile starts. She hadn’t thought of that, despite how teaching her to hear the thoughts of her companions <em>exactly </em>resembled shifting a block.</p><p>“Is there anything—”</p><p>“I’m not a doctor or a singer,” he says quickly. “You’d know more than I. But no, I don’t think she has bound any of us with anything stronger than blackmail.”</p><p><em>But she could, if she was resisted</em>, lays unspoken between them.</p><hr/><p>The Exile came home, with the singers who would become Revan and Malak, once, four months before the full council sanctioned the intervention that had been going on eight months already.</p><p>Eight months of the background noise of war, strategy, and troop movements.</p><p>There were children practicing in the courtyard. Stalls and Chambers, she guessed, most with their own lightsabers. They wore white tabards over their tunics.</p><p>One of them tried to catch her eye, aware of where she had been and brimming with questions. He was good at noticing patterns in music. She’d tutored him on using that skill to hearing the harmonies between people, to expand it further, outwards, and notice patterns on the large scale. “Sing with us!”</p><p>The Exile shook her head. She hadn’t needed Revan’s warning: she knew war had changed her songs. <em>To sing with anyone younger than Singer would be to threaten the purity of their self-expression</em>, Revan had said, so perfectly mimicking Vrook that both the Exile and Alek had doubled over laughing. Revan had meant it, all the same.</p><p>“I don’t think I should.”</p><p>Words were enough, with his keen hearing, or perhaps it was her gift combined with his, and there was a harmonic between them already. The padawan sang it back: took what he heard in her voice and expanded on it, sang <em>you are a shield for us, even in your silence, you couldn’t just do nothing, </em>you <em>will do it because you </em>can.</p><p>There was something new in his voice, a thread of determination backing up his joyful curiosity. Here was one who could see a threat to all he had ever known and still sing in the face of it.</p><p>But the echo of death rarely came to Dantooine, in those days. H<em>e’d</em> never seen it. <em>She</em> had.</p><p>The Exile sighed, all caution made useless. “Your chamber-master is going to <em>kill </em>me.”</p><p>“What is Atris going to say?” he said, amused. “I chose to sing it, so it is part of my song now.”</p><hr/><p>“I don’t hear anything different,” says Vrook. There’s no lie in his voice. “Your voice is not as good as it was, and you still have no songs.”</p><p>“But I sing!”</p><p>“I can’t deny that I see the effects of music. You make sounds, and things happen. And yet it is difficult to believe.”</p><p>The Exile waits. Perhaps Vrook’s <em>lack </em>of affection for her will allow him to tell her something that Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar could not.</p><p>“I see that you wrap the songs of your companions around you, but can you sing me a song of yourself?”</p><p>“And influence <em>your </em>songs, Master Vrook?” says the Exile. Her Control holds her steady enough to give her space to wonder why the question made her afraid, and, because she was afraid, angry. “‘Corrupt the purity of your self-expression’ with something you were never meant to know?” If she sang of Malachor, like Ansset sang of his life when he returned to the Songhouse, would it be mercy or cruelty? Even in Ansset’s time, it had been a close thing, a knifeblade either way, and it had been the experiences of one man, one who had never known war.</p><p>She carries Malachor around her like a cloak. A thousand songs in agony, a thousand voices silenced at her order. It is foolishness to think she does not.</p><p>“Hmph,” says Vrook, but there is a grudging and temporary respect as he gives her one last lesson.</p><p>Kreia, on the other hand, is <em>incensed</em>. “What fool denies wisdom offered to them? The tree that does not lean into the wind, does not withstand the storm. This planet and it’s people have seen pain, and is he processing it, or his own? Pah! He is ‘keeping his songs pure.’ And <em>you</em>,” she says, rounding on the Exile. “Do not think you are protecting anyone by your silence. They will learn or they will break.”</p><hr/><p><em>I’m sure I know you</em>, the Exile sings, from behind the Disciple.</p><p>“I am sure I just have one of those faces,” he responds.</p><p>“That was songtalk.”</p><p>The Disciple turns around, his expression wry. “So it was. You <em>do </em>remember me.”</p><hr/><p>She does remember the padawan in Stalls and Chambers who sang her own song back to her, and he remembers her.</p><p>“The music, that is easy to forget,” he says. “With no need for Control to store your songs, and no need for singing. The stone of the Songhouse is my childhood home, my foundation, but when I grew up became a soldier, not a singer.” And: “The songmaster I would have chosen, the one meant for me, was lost.”</p><p>Lost, not dead. Her decisions had echoes she had not accounted for. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It wasn’t all bad,” says the Disciple. He gestures to the rubble around them. “I left the Songhouse before all of this. I had skills the Republic could use. Besides, I had already begun to have doubts when the Songmasters couldn’t hear the purity of your intentions. I did not want to be a part of the Songhouse if it would punish<em>you</em>for doing the right thing.”</p><p>“Purity of intentions does <em>n</em><em>o</em><em>t</em> mean I did the right thing,” says the Exile. “It’s easy to lose sight of what the right thing is in war.”</p><p>His amused smile hasn’t changed at all, nor his habit of hearing what she won’t say. “It would not <em>kill </em>you to admit that you have definitive opinions on the justice of your sentence.”</p><p>“Do you still wish to come with me?”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>She takes his hand. “Will you sing with me, Mical?”</p><hr/><p>She finally gets a long conversation with Kavar.</p><p>It is good to see a friendly face.</p><p>He says much of the same things Vrook had: that her songs are a casualty of the war; that mortality is not conducive to song. His song is placid, calming. He is not lying, but he is not telling her everything, either. <em>I can wait</em>, the Exile thinks.</p><p>No. It is what Kavar is singing. Y<em>ou can wait. All things in time. The threat will reveal itself in time</em>.</p><p><em>Not everyone has that luxury, Songmaster</em>, she sings. <em>Some who think they do, do not</em>.</p><p>“How do you know what <em>would </em>have happened?” he counters. They are definitely not just talking about whatever is hunting Jedi. “Do you see what was lost because of Revan’s recklessness. Yours?”</p><p>“Do you not think I know what I did? Do you not think I carry it with me?”</p><p><em>I know you do</em>, he sings. The apology is genuine, but it is as much apology as she is ever going to get. There is a sadness there, too, as if she has failed to learn something vital.</p><p>“The future is in flux and the past is a song already sung,” says the Exile. <em>What’s done is done</em>.</p><p>“Oh, my dear,” says Kavar. “Nothing is ever <em>done</em>.”</p><hr/><p>Someone, it seems, either in the Songhouse or in the Republic army, has taught the Disciple how to lay and remove blocks, and with his reopened connection to his songs, he is quickly combining the two, to devastating offensive and defensive effect.</p><p>In time, she thinks, the others will seek him out, let him sound out the shape of their minds, and make sure there are no nasty surprises there. Ask him to lay a few blocks of his own, against horror, against paralysis and confusion.</p><p>Well, she thinks. Everyone but Atton, who dislikes the Disciple, blocks, <em>and </em>people who deal in them.</p><hr/><p>“A word, Songmaster?” says the Disciple.</p><p>She steps into the medbay.</p><p>The Disciple places his hands behind his back, but not before she can see that his hand is injured. “It’s about our pilot.”</p><p><em>Wonderful</em>.</p><p>“He was asking some rather pointed questions, and I—” he clears his throat. “What I mean to say is that I’ve been away from the Songhouse long enough to know what is and is not my business.”</p><p>The Exile hums her confusion.</p><p>Mical shifts his weight onto his right foot slightly, and back again, a strange break of Control, for him. “For all that Atton’s ignorance of Modesty is startling, his song for you is what I mean is that there will be no back-singing from <em>me</em>, Songmaster.”</p><p>The Exile pinches the bridge of her nose, comprehension finally dawning. Were they in the Songhouse, they would have never broached this subject. “Are you expecting a<em> thank you?</em>”</p><p>The Disciple lifts his chin, but blushes.</p><hr/><p>After that, it’s not <em>entirely</em> a surprise when Atton wanders into the cockpit with a cold pack over his eye —kolto is too valuable to waste on inter-crew spats. He waves off her hands when she takes off her gloves and reaches for him. He sits, and hums his own healing, looking pleased with himself when it works.</p><p>“All right,” says the Exile. “What happened?”</p><p>Atton looks sheepish, the mirror to Mical’s blush. “Uh. You remember the question I asked you, when we first met? About growing up Songhouse?”</p><p>“...yes?”</p><p>“Well you didn’t answer it all the way. You said how it worked for you, and said it was different for others. So I asked Mical.”</p><p><em>Sithspit</em>. She stares at him. Asking questions, Mical had said. A startling ignorance of Modesty. <em>Mical was trying to be gracious</em>. “You <em>deserved </em>that.”</p><p>“Yeah. Well. I know that <em>now</em>. Matter of fact, I now know a whole hell of a lot of things I didn’t need to know, because after punching me in the face on principle, and explaining why you never ask a Songhouse kid that question, Mical treated me to a very <em>nice </em>lecture on the science of pain receptors and their connection to hormones, all the drugs you and he are allergic to, and a graphic theory on what happened to Darth Malak’s face. Which I really did <em>not</em> need to know.”</p><p>He has a point. “Sorry.”</p><p>Atton leans back, bracing his feet against the bottom edge of the control panel, and putting his hands behind his head. She knows better than to think he’s actually relaxed. “Why’d you answer my questions the first time, anyway? I probably would have wound the Disciple up about it, just to be an asshole, but I do like to know how <em>much</em> of an asshole I am before I really commit.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. There’s no answer that she wants to give that is satisfactory: they either say too much or too little.</p><p>“I’m sorry. That those things happened, I mean,” he adds, when she raises an eyebrow. “To you, to Mical, to kriffing Darth Malak and Revan, even. Family should make you stronger, not...not limit your choices like that.”</p><p>“Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet,” she reminds him, softly.</p><p>“<em>I</em> know that,” he says, pulling his feet down from the ledge. “That doesn’t mean that <em>wet </em>didn’t actually exist.”</p><p>She is going to have to think about that one.</p><p>“Really makes me think, though. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable joining the Songhouse, if this...you know, big on bodily autonomy, me.” The last part twists, discordant, both truth and lie.</p><p>The Exile sighs. “I was disowned when they cast me out, Atton. If you want to join the Songhouse, you’re going to have to ask someone else.”</p><p>He snorts at that suggestion. “Not likely.” His clothes rustle as he squirms in his seat, crossing his arms and looking away. <em>Rather follow you</em>, he adds, singing so softly that the Exile can’t be sure if he sang with his voice or his mind. “Besides,” he says, louder, a bit too rapidly, “pretty sure they’re going to have to welcome you back, anyway. They’re a few singers short of a full chorus, and you’re the only Jedi Singer I’ve met with any sense.”</p><p>“Har, har,” she says, nudging his seat with a toe. “You’re right, you know. If the Songhouse survives all this, things will have to change.”</p><p>Atton swallows. “You know,” he says slowly. He still doesn’t look at her. “You know. If it’s worth anything, the Disciple told me he cleared <em>all </em>his medical checks when he left the Songhouse. You couldn’t hurt him. Unless you were into that, I guess.”</p><p>The Exile opens her mouth. Closes it. “Atton –”</p><p>“Don’t make fun. Kid’s got a heart like a star and the song in it is yours. Kriffing annoying, but if you haven’t heard him, you haven’t been paying attention.”</p><p>She throws her gloves at him and flees the cockpit.</p><hr/><p>The so-called Lord of Pain wraps himself in music, is barely anything besides song stitched together with veins of Control. He is loud, too much. He makes the Exile’s bones ache. <em>Silence</em>, she sings, <em>breath</em>, <em>darkness</em>.</p><p><em>Life without </em><em>song</em>, he sings. <em>Impossible. Death</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Not death. Something else.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There is nothing else. Only hunger, only void. I do not wish to die.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You are not at peace.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Are you?</em>
</p><hr/><p>“Were you Revan’s teacher?” the Exile asks.</p><p>“Revan had many teachers,” says Kreia.</p><p>The Exile waits.</p><p>Kreia looks at her a long time, and then opens her mouth and sings <em>Revan</em>.</p><p>At least, as well as Revan can be sung by someone who isn’t Revan herself. Her song always lent itself to being projected upon by others.</p><p>It is answer enough.</p><hr/><p>Malak sings action over the Jedi Council’s inaction. Malak sings of the Mandalorians, sings rumors of death on the Outer Rim, sings innocents in danger, sings the Republic asking for help and finding none.</p><p><em>Outrage</em>, sing the singers on the Exile’s left and right. <em>War</em>.</p><p><em>War</em>, sings Malak. <em>War</em>. <em>Outrage</em>. <em>The Songhouse has failed.</em></p><p><em>Illusion</em>, sings the Exile. The figures on her left and right ignore her. Malak looks at her with a twinkle in his eye.</p><p>She’d forgotten what a pompous bastard he could be. “Alek, this is not the song we sung.”</p><p>
  <em>Something had to be done.</em>
</p><p>“That’s true. But we set out to save the Republic, not throw down the stones of the Songhouse.”</p><p>Malak smiles at her, as if he knew she would agree with him, eventually. “You know that was never Revan’s desire. If you had heard what Revan heard...”</p><p>“If I had heard what Revan heard, <em>I wouldn’t be here</em>,” the Exile snaps. She hears the truth in it as she says the words. “If I had been following Revan, and not <em>myself</em>, do you think she still would have chosen <em>you</em> over <em>me</em>?”</p><p>She’s made him angry now, the line between memory and vision blurring. “They will remember me, little sister. They will not remember you.”</p><p>The Exile closes her eyes. Opens them. “I decided that Revan would not arrive with reinforcements. And so I closed the trap. I destroyed the Mandalorians. I destroyed my own forces. I won the war. But Revan <em>delayed</em>. I was loyal to the cause, not to her. I wasn’t <em>intended</em> to survive. I know that now.”</p><p>What Revan had heard had altered her song, even as it remained wholly hers, like hearing Ansset’s had changed little Fiimma’s.</p><p>Revan had not been able to hear the change.</p><p>“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Malak. I don’t have the luxury of saying I did what I was told, or that I was hoodwinked, somehow, by Revan’s charisma. I chose, and I can’t change the past. But my choices were not your choices. My reasons were not your reasons, nor should they be.”</p><p>“Wake up,” says Malak, almost pitying. “You have to wake up.”</p><p><em>You were going to be the songbird of Taris, </em><em>Alek,</em> she thinks. <em>What was it that tipped the scales? Following Revan to Korriban? What Revan found </em><em>in the wreckage of</em><em> Malachor V? What happened after the Mandalorian War ended? Where did you go? </em></p><p>She ignites her lightsaber and grits her teeth, staring the illusions in the eyes.</p><p>She loses.</p><hr/><p>She hears the fear in the voices of her soldiers, and thinks she understands. “Let me go up, Captain.” <em>I will do it. I will do it</em>. Her voice cracks. She remembers the loyalty of her soldiers, the songs she had with them. Dxun was full of life, just as it was full of death. Life running through her hands like sand, like water, like smoke.</p><p>She disables the mines by hand.</p><p><em>Was it wasted?</em> Her soldiers ask. <em>Did it mean something, in the end? </em><em>Did we matter?</em></p><hr/><p>“I can’t. I won’t.”</p><p><em>Apathy is death</em>, sing the illusions, a drone that rattles her bones.</p><p>The Exile almost drops her lightsaber.</p><p>Refusing to die is not quite the same as choosing to live. A stupor, a blindness, a sleep, part infection and part choice.</p><p>Kreia was right to ask if she’d found what she was looking for among the dead. Mical was right to chide her about sidestepping. At the core of her is cold Songhouse stone, warmed by many hands. It has been a long time since she has been afraid of silence. Why then does she fear song?</p><p>Had she always been strong enough to bear it, or is she stronger, now?</p><p><em>How does this song end?</em> asks the illusion of Kreia. The illusion uses songtalk where Kreia would not. The effect is unsettling. “Either you conclude it, or the echoes go on forever, unfinished.”</p><hr/><p>There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.</p><p>She crosses blades with the apparition of what she might have become, had she truly been Revan’s left hand as Malak was her right, and thinks it again, a mantra: There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.</p><p>She has always been able to sing in the face of death.</p><p>There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.</p><p>So what is this? She ducks her own blade and makes a run for it. She can’t keep her breath enough to sing.</p><p>Of course she’d seen the changes in Revan and Malak. She’d seen the changes in herself. But she had set her face long before Malachor: she had always intended to present herself for judgment. She had broken faith with the Jedi Council, and she believed she was right to do so, but such actions always had consequences.</p><p>She would not have followed Revan into the outer reaches of the darkness. She already had followed her to Dxun, to Malachor V, and through the nothing beyond. There has to be something she is not seeing.</p><p>The eyes of the specter are empty. There is no song in them. Only herself reflected back.</p><p>It is frightening, in an abstract way, but the Exile finds herself oddly detached from the fear. As if this battle is familiar.</p><p>There are no songs for this.</p><p>It is time to go home.</p><hr/><p>She hears the Disciple’s confession, and it occurs to her that Mical is angry. Angry in the same way that Atris was angry. Atris chose not to follow, and Mical had been too young to. That for all his Control, for all that he thinks and thinks and thinks, turning his problems over in his mind note by note, his sunny disposition is fought for, and won.</p><p>Mira calls Mical a tame kath-hound.</p><p>She is right. May the fates help whoever tries to take what he defends.</p><p>“The Seeker who brought you to the Songhouse named you well.”</p><p>“Do you think?” says Mical, and the song in his voice is bitter. “I always thought it was cruel. Someone who doesn’t look like much, named after the Emperor of the Galaxy. Mikal the tyrant.”</p><p>“Father Mikal,” says the Exile, gently. “You are an historian. You know this.” History had recorded Emperor Ansset’s heir, Ephrim son of Josif, as the first Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, but it was a Republic that the tyrant had dreamed of. The Songhouse remembered: Mikal was the father of the Republic. The tyrant who loved the greatest Songbird in history as a son.</p><p>“Do you not think,” says Mical, slowly, “that you will make it through this?”</p><p>“Something is coming,” she says, finally. And then, pitching her song to cut through the ambient noise of the Ebon Hawk: <em>I have given each of you all I can. The legacy of the Jedi is in your songs.</em></p><p>Bao-Dur snorts, softly. He heard the undercurrent of the song. She suspected he would. He closes a panel on Remote, and she hears the same tune back. He has been listening to her lessons with the others.</p><p>Mira nods decisively at something. <em>Time to stop running</em>.</p><p>Visas waits. <em>It will come when it will come.</em></p><p>Atton slams a storage compartment, suddenly, inexplicably, and incandescently furious.</p><hr/><p>“Wait, General,” says Bao-Dur. The Exile turns, and words seem to fail him then, because he <em>sings</em>: hope and anger, weariness and rest, vengeance and choices, all rolled up into a question.</p><p>She considers him seriously, and presses an off-hand lightsaber into his palm. “Your choice, of course,” she says, lightly, warmed by his trust, his faith. “But you’ve always seemed to thrive on the impossible. If <em>you</em> think you can defend the innocent with song, without malice against the enemy, then you can.” <em>I believe in you</em>.</p><p>Bao-Dur bows his head.</p><p>The Exile ignites her lightsaber. “Now, are you going to show me what you’ve learned from spying on everyone else, or are you going to stand there and let me lecture you?”</p><p>Bao-Dur laughs, his dry, quiet laugh so like her own, and it sounds like <em>try me</em>. “I’ll take practical experience any day.”</p><hr/><p>All she hears in this place is loss.</p><p>She takes off her armor, stashing it quietly in an anteroom just inside the door of the enclave. There is power running now, and she hears the fountains ahead, signs of human habitation. Signs of life.</p><p>There is an ache in her chest. She breathes deeply, slings a robe over her shoulders for the first time in nearly a decade. She is not part of the Songhouse, but she is a singer, and songmaster to other singers. She respects the wisdom of the Songmasters, but the near extinction of the Songhouse and her exile have made her a peer.</p><p>It is good to see things rebuilt. The green of growing things, the sounds of the fountains, the murmur of voices waiting for her.</p><p>But all she hears in this place is loss.</p><p>It is strange: conventional wisdom holds that grief unharnessed weakens song, but her heart is full to bursting with something indefinable. She could sing here, and shake the very walls down.</p><p>She forges on, past the fountains. She does not hear Kreia follow her, nor Visas follow Kreia.</p><hr/><p>The Songmasters tell her of the gathering on Visas’ homeworld, of songs not just cut short, but emptied.</p><p>They’d seen an echo of something coming for them, and had gathered, thinking numbers might clarify the vision.</p><p>No, <em>Atris</em> had suggested numbers might clarify the vision.</p><p>It was Atris who had convinced the Republic to contact the Exile.</p><p>Atris, the historian, the archivist, who could not justify leaving her post and following her heart. Atris, whose song, in the Exile’s memory of their last encounter, spoke of bitterness. Atris who surrounded herself with Handmaidens who were deaf to song. To the changes in a song.</p><p><em>I was an historian</em>, Kreia had said. <em>I found more questions than the Songhouse could answer.</em></p><hr/><p>“Songmaster,” says Mical, turning back towards the dormitory. There is resolve in his tone. “It is not Kreia who has shaken you so.”</p><p>She gives him a level look, already seated on the meditation rug Visas bought for her on Onderon.</p><p>He tries again. “What did the Songmasters say to you?”</p><p>“The Songmasters are dead.”</p><p>“And Atris has betrayed us, yes. <em>Songmaster</em>.”</p><p>The Exile sits back. “Why are you here, Mical?”</p><p>“I was worried about you.”</p><p>“No, why are you <em>here</em>? I influenced your songs as a child. What is to say I’m not doing so now? Do you not wonder why you follow me?”</p><p><em>You are a parasite</em>, spits Vrook in her mind’s eye. <em>Forming bonds, leeching off the connections of others. Your gift of the voice has always given you undue influence over the minds of </em><em>the young and wayward</em><em>.</em></p><p>“I follow you because I believe what I heard from you all those years ago, Songmaster,” says Mical. “I see with my eyes that it is still the case. I admire you. But the galaxy does not revolve around any one person, though any one person can dedicate themselves to defend it. You taught me that.”</p><p>The Exile fixes her gaze somewhere above his left ear. “At Malachor, it was –I assumed my songs were taken away, or that I was deafened by what I heard. But I stopped my own ears. The other side of my gift of the voice: if I can harmonize with anyone, I can also not.” She looks down, at the rug, at the decking. “I knew. I’d always had a knack for that trick. I pulled it on Revan once, right before a performance. I don’t remember why. Got the mother of all lectures from Songmaster Sunrider. But I knew, if I would have let myself remember.”</p><p>Mical sits in front of her, legs crossed. “You heard something you could not bear. To hear so much death at once would have killed you.”</p><p>"Death? It was war, Mical. It was nothing I hadn't heard before. It was the nothingness. The silence. I harmonize with others; it is my gift. There were a thousand thousand voices lifted up in agony, and then there was silence. It was better to hear nothing at all than void where there should be life. But that void was inside me. I would have to be completely songless to not hear it."</p><p>Mical does not smile at this. “The Songmasters thought you were the source of the echo of death that has followed us.”</p><p>“I am the bait. And I do carry something with me.” She looks back at him. “Malachor V is not gone. The song of the universe is still suffering there; I'm still connected to it. More so, now.”</p><p>It is like Mical cannot hear it. The Exile’s voice is <em>empty</em>. There is nothing of herself in it. What she has become is worse than what Atton was before: Her <em>true</em> song is the death of song, and the songs of others. She grows in strength from death, and from her companions. She uses her gift of the voice to sing what she hears, to sing her friends voices, their songs, to sing to the living. Everything in her song is chosen, gathered, borrowed, stolen, amplified. Not hers.</p><p>“And you think that is a matter of accident?” says Mical. “That you sing of life and living when you know also the songs of death and ending? That you spin songs from what you hear, and from the people who love you?”</p><p>She thinks of the twisted brightness around a black hole. She thinks of a bog, the water coming up from the ground, and the ground itself made of drowned plants. Death feeding life feeding death, on forever.</p><p>Mical nods, satisfied. “It is possible to be afraid of death, and so delay to make choices that will save more lives. That is why the Songmasters have failed where you have not. You know what it will take, and you are not afraid.”</p><p>“I <em>am</em> afraid.”</p><p>“But not of dying.”</p><p>"No."</p><hr/><p>She follows Kreia to Telos, to Atris.</p><p>The cacophony of darksong around her is unbearable. The Exile stops her ears and listens to the frightened woman in front of her instead.</p><p>She does not think to query the voices around her.</p><hr/><p><em>I have authored so much death</em>, sings Bao-Dur. <em>Let m</em><em>y song end</em><em> saving something instead</em>. <em>I will die in a different way if I do not.</em></p><hr/><p><em>I do not fear, for in fear, lies death. I am not afraid to</em> <em> die, but no longer do I loathe my life. I ask you, finally, to forgive me for the path I took when I lost my way. I</em> <em>t has taken time for me to return here. I’ve been stronger for the journey. What happens now shall not be done out of hate, or revenge, but for the sake of all life.</em></p><p>
  <em>This body is a prison no longer.</em>
</p><p>Visas stands. “Let us go.”</p><hr/><p>“And so that is why you fight,” says Visas. “To prove Revan wrong.”</p><p>“Not Revan,” says Mandalore, rising.</p><hr/><p>Darth Nihilus is a hunger, a void with will, an eater of songs, a silence.</p><p>He dies like a mortal man in the end.</p><hr/><p>There is a place, the Exile knows, beyond all song. Beyond light, beyond dark, and in which there is nothing but oneself.</p><p>It is not this place.</p><p>The Exile stalks the broken surface of Malachor V. She stalks the halls of the Academy, the crucible Revan found and founded, a festering wound the Exile created. This is a place meant to break the innocent, to drive them to let go of song, or grow stronger in defiance. To change, or die.</p><p>She thinks of Atton’s songs, grown strong in spite of everything. Mira standing tall. Visas singing to herself of small pleasures. Bao-Dur surrounded by green and growing things. Mical, looking to the future clear-eyed and singing anyway. Mandalore’s steadiness. HK. T3.</p><p>She thinks of the echoes of Malachor V. Lives lost, future lost, a planet in agony, only held together by residual gravitic anomalies, the echo of the weapon that won the war.</p><p>(She can only hope Remote has found its way)</p><p>She will sing here.</p><p>She will shake the very walls down.</p><hr/><p>She sends her students back to the ship.</p><p>Her face is set towards Trayus Core.</p><p>She does not notice who turns back.</p><hr/><p>“Wish I’d...never met you,” says Atton, and it sounds like <em>I will always help you.</em></p><p>“You’re a damn liar,” says the Exile, trying to ignore the blood, trying to sort cauterized and uncauterized wounds, praying Kreia’s tutoring in healingsong will be enough. There’s nothing she can do for his eye, and likely not his arm either, but she was <em>just</em> fast enough and it is possible if any of them die today it <em>might</em> not be him. “You are <em>never</em> where you are supposed to be and you have always been a pain in my ass.”</p><p>“Ha-ohh, it hurts to laugh.” He reaches up a hand, and touches two bloody fingers to her cheek before it falls heavily back again. “At least I’m…good, good at it. Save...save your strength. Sion’s still out there.”</p><p>“He had better be,” the Exile growls. “You’re going to have a few dashing scars.”</p><p>“Liar. Was always ugly. Now my outsides...match my insides.” He hums and the song is his. Just his. “Thought I would never see...another face again. And then you were there again. Thought being a Singer was like breaking Control. Like giving up. But it made me more myself. You need. You need. You have to <em>go</em>.”</p><p>She’s aware that she is crying. She needs Control. “Don’t be a fool.” This is not the day his heart will fail him. Not today.</p><p>“There are worse...things I could be.” His face twists. “Wish I could...have told <em>her</em> that. Sounds different...when you say it. Like you’re saying...something else.”</p><hr/><p>The Exile methodically weakens Sion’s Control.</p><p>In the end, he goes.</p><p>In the end, she sings Farewell for him, too.</p><hr/><p>Kreia hates Song, even as she sings, even as she knows that all living things have song, whether they hear it and sing it or not. Kreia loves the Exile, even as she tries to kill her.</p><hr/><p><em>You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice</em>, the Exile sings, in a brief respite from whirling lightsabers. <em>Life does not only consist of struggle</em>.<em> The answer to life’s betrayal is not silence.</em> <em>No silence is absolute. There is always something left. There are echoes. Nothing is ever done.</em></p><p>
  <em>There is only yourself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No. That which you cannot touch still exists.</em>
</p><hr/><p><em>I do not want your mercy</em>, Kreia sings, <em>though I thank you all the same</em>. “I imagined this day, and wondered if you would offer. I wanted you to say those words. I did not imagine that I would lose the thread of all my desires and plans. That I would spurn my defeat. That in the end all I would want is for you to be complete.” <em>You have been the best of them.</em></p><p>The Exile nods.</p><p>“Farewell, Exile,” says Kreia, and it sounds like the love song.</p><hr/><p>Atton leans against the doorway, a Jedi’s cloak shrouding the ruin of his arm. There’s a kolto patch over his eye again. The Exile listens, and hears the echoes of Mikal’s grudging acceptance that nothing short of sitting on the pilot’s still-healing gut wound would keep him from waiting.</p><p>Everyone is waiting.</p><p>“Mira said someone ought to see if you needed carried out,” he lies.</p><p>The Exile raises an eyebrow. From the way he’s swaying, she is the one who is going to be doing the carrying.</p><p>“Don’t just stand there, we have a bomb about to go off. And I see that look. I figure we have a long way to go to get to wherever we are going next. If you, you know, happen to need a pilot.”</p><hr/><p>The song of Malachor V ends, its echoes no longer unfinished. They are carried forward in the voices of the lives it touched; the memory of song.</p><hr/><p>I will never hurt you.<br/>I will always help you.<br/>If you are hungry<br/>Ill give you my food.<br/>If you are frightened<br/>I am your friend.<br/>I love you now.<br/>And love does not end.</p>
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